Although Australia is not a party to the Iran nuclear deal, Scott Morrison is reviewing whether Australia should follow Donald Trump’s lead and withdraw its support

By Dr Trevor Findlay, University of Melbourne In his meeting with President Trump in Buenos Aires on the margins of the G20 summit, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison reportedly mentioned his planned review of Australia’s support for the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

Known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA), this has significantly curbed Iran’s nuclear activities for at least a decade and potentially longer, while subjecting it to the most intrusive verification system applied to any country undefeated in war.

The government’s policy review was announced during the October 2018 by-election for former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s parliamentary seat of Wentworth and was widely considered a ploy, ultimately unsuccessful, to retain the seat for the Liberal Party.

But even now, it’s not clear whether a real review is occurring or whether the Department of Foreign Affairs is simply going through the motions. Regardless, the result is expected this month.

It’s also not clear whether it was Mr Morrison or Mr Trump who raised the issue during their meeting, but the Prime Minister claimed it as “a success”, noting that Trump “very much welcomed the fact that, as a friend and an ally, we have always been ready to re-look at these things”.

This attempt to curry favour with the famously mercurial president is ill-advised. Quite apart from the inaccuracy of the suggestion that Australia is always willing to reconsider its policies just because it is a US ally (that certainly has not occurred over the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the US refuses to ratify), there are significant political and substantive drawbacks for Australia even hinting that its support for the Iran deal is wavering.

Australia has for decades had a bipartisan policy towards preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. It has actively supported the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treatyand the global nuclear safeguards system run by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which verifies compliance with the treaty through on-site inspections and other monitoring.

Australia has also been at the forefront of efforts to strengthen safeguards.

It was the first country to adopt an Additional Protocol, designed to enhance the system after Iraq’s near-acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1990s, and the first to qualify for the so-called Broader Conclusion about its compliance with the Protocol’s rigorous new requirements.

Although Australia wasn’t involved in the Iran negotiations, it was consulted as the talks proceeded and vocally supported the initiative and outcome. To renege now would cast doubt on our longstanding commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, jeopardise our credibility internationally, including at the IAEA, and call into question our commitment to multilateral, negotiated solutions to international problems.

Although not perfect, the Iran agreement was the product of an extraordinary international diplomatic effort to curb Iran’s nuclear weapon activities through a multilateral verifiable arrangement.

It involved not just the United States, but three other Western allies of Australia, the European Three (France, Germany and the United Kingdom), as well as the European Union, China and Russia – all of which are sticking to the accord.

While the Morrison government might have gained fleeting kudos from the Trump administration, Australia risks confounding not just the other JCPOA parties, but friends and allies which endorsed it subsequently, including Canada, Indonesia and Japan.

The only states pleased by Australia’s move would be Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps the worst implication of rejecting the JCPOA is to cast doubt on the plausibility of multilateral negotiations to resolve the North Korean nuclear impasse.

The term, “climate crisis” is now the most commonly used descriptor when discussing global warming. Extreme weather events, firestorms, heat waves, flooding rain, loss of ice, snow and species are rightly seen within the frame of an emergent climate crisis. But if we are really witnessing a climate crisis – one with the potential to destroy our way of life and end our lives – how should we respond as a community?

This is a question being tested in Australia’s classrooms and Parliament right now and later today, in fact. The Queensland Supreme Court will be asked to decide whether, despite this crisis, it is reasonable for a large corporation to dictate how the community should be allowed to use social media to try and prevent this crisis.

The background to the case is this. Aurizon, the rail freight company formerly owned by the Government of Queensland, has been targeted by a number of individuals and communities because it plays a key role in the coal industry managing the 2,670 km Central Queensland coal network. It is also critical to Indian mining company Adani’s plans to ship coal from the proposed Carmichael mine to Abbott Point, as Adani plans to build a 200km line that will connect to Aurizon’s existing Goonyella and Newlands rail network.

Without Aurizon there is no Adani mine.

One of those groups protesting the proposed Adani mine, and Aurizon’s involvement in the expansion of the coal industry, is a small community group called FLAC – Front Line Action on Coal. Unlike the large environmental NGO’s, FLAC is still committed to supporting people who take direct action to prevent the expansion of the coal industry and they have had some serious successes of late.

So much so that Aurizon has taken the extraordinary action of getting interim orders against FLAC. Those orders include prohibiting FLAC from inciting anyone by Facebook, website, and Twitter to enter rail corridors across Aurizon’s network or interfering with any of the company’s coal trains.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court will be asked to make these interim orders permanent thus preventing FLAC from using social media to inform people and to be prohibited from going within 20 meters of the entire Queensland rail corridor. That’s a lot of rail corridor.

But there are concerns Aurizon will want more than just clear corridors. For many in the climate movement FLAC has become a touchstone as a moral force and an inclusive community that takes seriously the discipline and commitment to non-violent, safe, direct action. And this is what Aurizon is keen to shut down.

The company wants to prevent this small community group from encouraging, supporting or training anyone to take non-violent action to prevent this crisis. The less there are of these kinds of communities the better things are for large corporations like Aurizon.

These are extraordinary days climatically and politically. On Friday there was the sight of thousands of Australian school kids leaving their classrooms to demand governments – State and Federal – take the action necessary to secure their future. It was an action that happened with blessing of the Australian Senate.

Globally the divestment campaign has seen billions divested from companies involved in the fossil fuel business. While banks with a high exposure to fossil fuel companies have been forced to either rule out further investment or explain their plan to manage the escalating risk posed by stranded assets.

Then there’s the science. According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report the world is confronting the real risk of mass wildfires, food and water shortages, super storms and dying coral reefs by as soon as 2040. The last week alone in Australia has seen Sydney experience a one in 100-year rain event, while Queensland continued to burn.

These are extraordinary times and the science tells us they will get even more extreme as the global political leadership fails to materialise to prevent it. It is in this context that Aurizon’s request to the Supreme Court to gag FLAC must be viewed.

The Supreme Court must decide if Aurizon, an enormously powerful and well connected corporation, should have the power to deny a small community group the right to inform Australians how to help to prevent this climate crisis.

Obviously the people who make up FLAC have a direct interest in the outcome, but should this corporation succeed in gagging free speech to this degree, we will all be the worse for it.

Finally, Aurizon’s action is based on the assumption that if FLAC stops training concerned citizens on how to take non-violent, safe, direct action, people will stop taking action. Unfortunately what may well happen is that people continue to act to prevent a climate catastrophe, but do so without the training, discipline or principles of non-violence.

December 5, 2018 Politicians around Australia are proposing ambitious plans to export renewable energy from Australia, using high-voltage power lines laid under the oceans.But will this work? Our research is investigating the economic and environmental case for Australia to become an Asian energy superpower.

Our recent study, which will be presented on December 11 at the UN Climate Change Conference, models electricity generation and demand – as well as the cost of augmenting and extending transmission infrastructure. We found a transmission network connecting Australia to Indonesia could help both nations achieve 100% renewable electricity by 2050.

This is in line with a UN push for more global power connections. Exporting clean power from countries with strong infrastructure to burgeoning global populations may be key to reaching the Paris Agreement climate targets…………

Australia’s northwest desert region has some of the world’s best solar and wind resources. An underwater high-voltage Direct Current (HVDC) link connecting Indonesia’s Java-Bali power grid to the Australian National Electricity Market grid through the Northern Territory would help both nations to achieve a 100% renewable power system by 2050.

An interconnector would change the Java-Bali decarbonisation pathway dramatically. In this scenario, power generation in Java-Bali is greatly reduced due to imports; energy wasted from local wind and solar PV becomes negligible. A large amount of electricity is imported into Java-Bali from Australia, especially in the evening after the sun has set and the PV in Java-Bali stops generating.

We could also take the opportunity to connect the Northern Territory to the rest of Australia’s energy market through an above-ground transmission line. Any wind and solar energy not used by Indonesia could then be fed to the national grid.

Australia could then meet the bulk of its energy needs through wind power, since strategic placement of wind farms would minimise variability in generation. Our models also favoured coupling wide-scale solar power with pumped hydro facilities. Pumped hydro can store solar power during the day and send it into the grid during the evening, and thus stabilise the entire operation.

Despite the high cost of building this infrastructure, our research found a 100% renewable Australasia power system could reduce wholesale electricity costs by more than 16%. Our estimates may be on the conservative side, as we assumed a constant cost for the HVDC technology but it’s likely to become cheaper in the coming decades.

The model finds that the optimal configuration of the international connector from NT to Indonesia is a staggering capacity of 43.8GW with construction starting from 2030. The optimal regional transmission from NT to the east coast would have a capacity of 5.5GW.

Incentives moving forward

Australia is one of the most vulnerable developed countries in terms of risk from climate change. It is in our interest to promote a strong global response. Australia has inherent advantages in terms of our abundant renewable resources and geographical location in the Asia Pacific. (Of course, there are political complications to overcome.)

Future research will expand the geographical scope of the current study by considering more domestic and international interconnection options to assess the economic viability of a larger Australasian super grid. The recent suggestion for electrification of Papua New Guinea and meeting the energy demands of Pacific island nations are two examples. Comparison with hydrogen exports, which might involve conversion of renewable energy into hydrogen or ammonia to allow export by ship, will also be studied.

Crossbenchers are being asked to support a bill preventing the signing of contracts before the next election Labor and the Greens will attempt to prevent the Morrison government from underwriting new coal-fired power as the energy policy battle moves into its next phase.

Labor on Tuesday resolved to support a Greens bill stopping the commonwealth from providing financial assistance to coal-fired power plants, and there is an effort to secure the requisite parliamentary numbers for an upset as the Morrison government moves ahead with its controversial energy package. Negotiations are under way with crossbenchers in both chambers.

The government secured a rubber stamp from the Coalition party room on Tuesday for policy measures aimed to reduce power prices, including a contentious divestiture power, but Guardian Australia revealed on Monday night ministers had to rework the original proposal substantially to head off a backbench revolt…….

The energy minister, Angus Taylor, who has signalled coal will be in the mix, with a possible indemnity against the risk of a future carbon price, declined to answer questions from journalists on Tuesday about whether the government would enter binding contracts with proponents before the next election, which would be difficult to unwind if the Morrison government loses next year.

The Greens, with support from Labor, are attempting to head that sortie off at the pass with the new private members’ bill. Discussions with the crossbench are under way in both chambers – but it is unclear whether the foray will succeed.

Adani coal mine water licence faces Federal Court challenge over move to bypass EIS, ABC , By Kate McKenna 4 Dec 18 The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has launched a legal challenge to a Federal Government decision to bypass an impact assessment of planned water use by Adani’s Carmichael coal mine in central Queensland.

Key points:

Federal Minister made an “error of law” in bypassing EIS, ACF alleges

Adani licensed to take up to 12.5b litres a year from Suttor River

Indian miner says it can only take water after other licensed users

The ACF applied to the Federal Court, challenging Federal Environment Minister Melissa Price’s decision not to activate the “water trigger” for the proposed pipeline infrastructure, which avoided a full environmental impact assessment (EIS).

Greta Thunberg, 15, told UN summit that students are acting in absence of global leadership Action to fight global warming is coming whether world leaders like it or not, school student Greta Thunberg has told the UN climate change summit, accusing them of behaving like irresponsible children.

Thunberg began a solo climate protest by striking from school in Sweden in August. But more than 20,000 students around the world have now joined her. The school strikes have spread to at least 270 towns and cities in countries across the world, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the US and Japan.

“For 25 years countless people have come to the UN climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future,” she said. “I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.”

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” she said. “We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with. We have to make our voices heard.”
………Toby Thorpe, a school student from Hobart, Tasmania, who took part in the recent school strikes in Australia and is also at the UN summit, said: “We are in this together. Together we are strong and we will not give up.” Australia’s resources minister, Matt Canavan, had dismissed the school strike – “the best thing you’ll learn about going to a protest is how to join the dole queue” – but the Senate later approved a motion in support of the students……..

The first two weeks of Thunberg’s strike were spent protesting outside the Swedish parliament. Now she spends every Friday on strike. “I like school and I like learning,” she told the Guardian. She said her strike would end when Sweden begins cutting its carbon emissions by a dramatic 15% a year: “Sweden is such a rich country and we have high per capita emissions, so we need to reduce more [than others].”

She also had a message for other school students: “You don’t have to school strike, it’s your own choice. But why should we be studying for a future that soon may be no more? This is more important than school, I think.”

Thunberg’s father, Svante, said: “As a parent you cannot support your child striking from school. I said to her you have to go out and do it for yourself.” But he added: “It’s OK in the holidays.”

Students from Scott Morrison’s southern Sydney electorate of Cook – as well as Townsville, Melbourne and Brisbane – arrived at Parliament House on Wednesday morning to meet with him.

Morrison said he would sit down with the school students……..

But one group of 11 students gathered out the back of Parliament House in the hope of speaking to Morrison had not yet had any luck.

Fourteen-year-old Tully Bowtell-Young travelled solo from Townsville for the chance to share her concerns with the prime minister – using her own pocket money to help cover costs.

“I think it’s worthwhile because nothing I have now is going to mean anything if I don’t have a future in this world,” she said.

The striking students want federal policymakers to stop the Adani coalmine and move Australia from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy.

“We have been trying so much for the possibility of meeting with [Scott Morrison] but if we don’t get that opportunity after coming so far and going through so much to be here I think we will be a bit disheartened,” she said.

The group of students tried numerous times to call the prime minister’s office but were told they needed to have a prearranged meeting organised – in some instances they were hung up on.

The documents, which have not previously been made public, reveal new aspects of the plan, including the proposed involvement of a Russian company currently under US sanctions to manufacture nuclear equipment. Continue reading →

Carbon emissions will reach 37 billion tonnes in 2018, a record high, December 6, 2018 The Conversation,Pep Canadell, CSIRO Scientist, and Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, CSIRO, Corinne Le Quéré, Professor, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, Glen Peters, Research Director, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo, Robbie Andrew, Senior Researcher, Center for International Climate and Environment Research – Oslo, Rob Jackson, Chair, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, globalcarbonproject.org, Stanford University.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels and industry are projected to rise more than 2% (range 1.8% to 3.7%) in 2018, taking global fossil CO₂ emissions to a new record high of 37.1 billion tonnes.

The strong growth is the second consecutive year of increasing emissions since the 2014-16 period when emissions stabilised, further slowing progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement that require a peak in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. Strong growth in emissions from the use of coal, oil and natural gas suggests CO₂ emissions are likely to increase further in 2019.

Strong energy demand is behind the rise in emissions growth, which is outpacing the speed at which decarbonisation of the energy system is taking place. Total energy consumption around the world increased by one sixth over the past decade, the result of a growing global middle class and the need to provide electricity to hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. The challenge, then, is for all nations to decarbonise their economies while also satisfying the need for energy, particularly in developing countries where continued growth in energy supply is needed.

BBC 5th Dec 2018 An effective ban on new coal mines in Wales getting planning permission isto come into effect. The measure is part of the Welsh Government’s new planning policy, published on Wednesday. Applications for opencast and deep-mine coal mining will only be allowed under “exceptional
circumstances”. Environment Secretary Lesley Griffiths said the policy will
ensure “we have well-designed spaces which will benefit future
generations”. It comes after the assembly passed legally-binding carbon
emissions targets on Tuesday. Planning Policy Wales governs what councils
can allow through planning permission.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-46447290

UNSW deal for mass-production of next generation solar cells will help cost of solar power – already the cheapest in the world – to halve again. The post UNSW deal for next generation solar cells to help halve cost of solar power appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Our research finds, emphatically, that in electricity there is no dilemma between decarbonisation and lower wholesale prices. The “tri-lemma” concept is already past its prime. The post The verdict is in: Renewables reduce energy prices (yes, even in South Australia) appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Opinion: ¶ “Why This Republican Mayor Spoke at Bernie Sanders’s Climate Town Hall” • Georgetown, Texas, went solidly for Trump in 2016, and for Romney in 2012. But last year, the Austin exurb became one of the greenest places in the state: It was the first Texan city to convert to 100% renewable energy to […]

South Australia’s energy transition is shrouded in myths created by those who want to slow or stop the switch to renewables. It is actually a model of success. Here’s why. The post Why South Australia energy transition is seen as model of success around the world appeared first on RenewEconomy.